Dinner
by Louise Hargadon
Summary: Oneshot set a couple of hours after the end of the Season 2 finale. Fitz waits patiently for Simmons to arrive so they can go for dinner together. He waits. And waits. And THEN he worries. Just a few FitzSimmons feels, nothing too dramatic!


_**A/N:** At the end of the season finale, I was so worried about **Fitz's** reaction to **Simmons** not showing up for dinner. Poor little love. So this is just that. I hadn't really expected this to be my first **FitzSimmons** fic, I had planned for lots of others, but... well. A combination of writer's block and season finales kinda forced my hand. I hope you like it, it's always so nerve-wracking posting in a new fandom, so I hope it isn't too terrible!_

 _ **Disclaimer: S.H.I.E.L.D** doesn't belong to me. The **Agents** don't belong to me. I don't even have **Peggy Carter's** lipstick. I'm just borrowing half of my OTP and I promise I'll be gentle with him and put him straight back._

 **Dinner**

His growling stomach agreed with the clock. It was definitely too late for dinner now.

Fitz took in a deep breath and puffed his cheeks out as he exhaled slowly. Simmons wasn't coming.

 _'It's fine,'_ he thought.

It wasn't a definite arrangement. They had had dinner together hundreds of times before, it was no big deal. They had arranged to have dinner together hundreds more times - but sometimes he would get so wrapped up in work that he would forget to meet her, or sometimes it was the other way around. He presumed that this was just one of those occasions. The Kree monolith was a fascinating object and no doubt Simmons had a lot to do in preparing for the studies she was going to start on it tomorrow.

 _'No, actually. No. It isn't fine,'_ he thought, throwing down the pen he had been absentmindedly playing with for the previous fifteen minutes in a sudden outburst of frustration. He pouted defiantly as he stuck his jaw out in derision.

Why had she not remembered dinner? This was no ordinary dinner. This was Dinner, with a capital D. It was an Important Dinner. It wasn't just a quick pizza on the way home. It wasn't a loosely-arranged affair that could be cancelled without a word. It had taken every last remnant of bravery that existed within his soul to stammer and splutter his way through asking his best friend to go to Dinner with him. The way he could hear his heart pounding in his chest, almost drowning his voice out, he may as well have asked her to marry him.

Why had she come to him at the worst possible moment to say she wanted to talk about... about what had happened to them? About what he had said to her at the bottom of the ocean? He could hear his own voice, mocking him. ' _You're more than that, Jemma'! More than that! You don't even have the balls to tell her you love her when you think you're going to die!'_ He shook his head angrily as if to physically shake the negative thoughts out of his brain.

Simmons had made it so clear, so abundantly clear to him for months now, that his feelings were his own and they were not feelings that she shared. He had coped. He had had to cope. If his choice was being forced to put aside his own unrequited emotions or losing the one person who meant far more to him than any other in existence, he could learn to live with a broken heart. It wasn't even broken. It was just bruised. Maybe it was more his ego that was bruised. His bruised, hurt feelings.

His relationship with Jemma Simmons had always had such a large element of exclusivity to it. They had befriended each other almost instantly. They were the only British people in their class and had naturally gravitated toward each other at first, as they were both new to America and felt oddly comforted by being strangers in a strange place together. They had been a team from the very start. Within a few weeks they had both felt as though they had been friends forever. They finished each other's sentences, they often knew what the other was thinking before a word was even said. They had an almost symbiotic relationship in which, although one could function well without the other, they worked best as a unit. Even their names fitted together perfectly - for years everyone at the S.H.I.E.L.D Academy had naturally presumed that they were both called Fitzsimmons.

Objectively, it was only natural that love would follow. There were different types of love, of course, and it had never occurred to either of them that their love for each other would be anything other than filial or platonic. Fitz knew, with the benefit of hindsight, that he had probably been in love with Simmons for far longer than he had realised. How else was one supposed to feel about their soulmate? Discovering that they were on completely different pages of their story with regard to their feelings for each other had hurt him. He couldn't deny it. He wouldn't be human if it hadn't hurt him. But he had learned to deal with it. He was still learning. So long as they never mentioned what had happened, he could deal with it.

As a matter of fact, Fitz felt that he had dealt with the situation perfectly - right until the moment that Simmons said something about it. She had brought this up. She was the one who had wanted to talk. She was the one who had chosen the least appropriate time possible to broach the most sensitive subject that would ever be broached between them. She knew that by bringing the subject up that she stood to destroy the precious relationship they had both fought so hard to rebuild. She had pushed him away at first, she hadn't known how to behave around him. She had left S.H.I.E.L.D, she had left _him_ , to go undercover at Hydra, she had specifically told him 'no'. He had backed off. Her allusion to having had a change of heart was nothing to do with him. This was not his fault, he had not asked for this.

Why had she not shown up? How could she have forgotten dinner?

He pulled his cardigan around his shoulders and picked up his backpack. There was no point in waiting. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps there was nothing to discuss. It had just been the emotion of her seeing Lance and Bobbi together again after she had been rescued. What had happened to Bobbi had shaken everyone. He understood that, of course he did, he wasn't an idiot.

He wasn't even angry. He had been angry with Jemma in the past for all sorts of silly things, but he wasn't angry about this. He was just confused. It wasn't like Jemma to be so flippant and careless of someone's emotions in this way. She had a practically infamous capacity to overthink, and she would never have brought up a subject so sensitive if she didn't know exactly what she was doing and what the consequences of her actions would be.

Fitz bit his lip as he considered his next action carefully. He closed the office door behind him and paused for a moment before heading back to where he had left Simmons. He tapped gently on the door before opening it slowly.

"Knock knock!" he called, cheerfully. "If you wait any longer, it'll be time for break- Jemma?" he asked, looking around the empty room, frowning in confusion. She couldn't have left without walking past the lab, he would have seen her.

He stared at the monolith for a few seconds and noticed that the casing had been left slightly ajar. He rolled his eyes and dashed over to close it. "That could be dangerous," he muttered to himself as he heard the casing click shut.

Turning around to head out of the door, he noticed that Simmons hadn't finished packing everything away. She was meticulous about protocol and was the tidiest person he knew. She would never leave without packing up. The room looked fine to him, but she would definitely have said it was a mess. His frown deepened.

"Jemma?" he repeated, slightly more anxiously this time. He walked toward the door, poked his head outside and looked up and down the corridor. There was no sign of her. The entire place suddenly felt uncomfortably empty and still.

A feeling of fear and panic welled up in Fitz's stomach so quickly that he had to catch his breath. Something was wrong. Something had happened. Something had happened to Jemma and he was too busy worrying about why she hadn't shown up for a stupid Dinner date to bother looking for her until now.

"What are you still doing here, Turbo?" a voice behind him asked. Fitz jumped a little before turning to face his friend.

"It's Simmons. She's gone," he said. Mack frowned.

"She left?"

"No. She's gone. She hasn't left this room... but... she's just gone," Fitz said, chewing his lower lip as he crossed his arms more tightly around himself. Mack blinked once before replying.

"I don't understand," he finally said. Fitz shook his head.

"Neither do I," he said in a small voice, his face grave with concern.

His churning stomach agreed with the clock. Dinner would have to wait.

 **THE END**


End file.
